


Blackout Days

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Angst, Between Seasons/Series, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Grieving John, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the only way to cope with something is not to cope with it at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackout Days

**Author's Note:**

> _Originally posted on Livejournal September 24, 2012_

Early on, there were too many. A voice, a moment, something discovered in a hastily packed box ambushed him as he tried to move on, away from the pain, and his mind refused it.

Blackout days weren't because John drank himself to oblivion; he drank, but never that far. Memories waited for him to sink deep enough. He couldn't risk that. Far enough down and they'd pull him the rest of the way. No.

When he opened a blank text document (full disclosure in text, edited disclosure in a new locked blog) to record the aching bland of the day, he found blank patches his mind would not revisit. Lacunae. Elisions. Monolithic black gulfs his mind slid past, veering away like a flock of pigeons circumnavigating Nelson's Column.

Brain says: _Not thinking about that. Nope. Redacted._

It wasn't good. It just was.

With time, the blackout days diminished. A scarf that particular shade of blue in a shop window would be seen. A work crew on a rooftop became something to walk past rather than turn away from. A man's voice at a certain pitch on an advert would not send him out of the room.

It could be called an improvement. Incrementally the world filled in with the things that are, and John left the things that were and might have been behind, falling into blackness.


End file.
